APEIROPHOBIA: [n.] the fear of infinity or infinite things.

—

you are love at the end of the world, something spelled without a glottal plea

the stars on my crown hang heavy tonight and i’ve barely slept for an hour but my mind drifts off to weary constellations and i sometimes wonder if we were aligned at all

you, vague hurt, you, toothache in the middle of a birthday party

you, a love like no other

and running without wolves to guide our journey, the forest scratches every inch of bare skin and i would cry out if you hadn’t done the same to me in your restless tossing and turning, there is love in your eyes but no love in the blood you make me bleed

there is still something left to be said. but my mouth is dry and full of sand, kiss it and catch a fly on the wall, smear ointment on its wings and maybe i’ll tell you about how i feel

and it isn’t a good one, it isn’t a love i towed beyond fathoms of seawater and across miles of irradiated coastlines, it isn’t me, count the distance and end up with infinity in one sitting, infinity with end, infinity to beg you of love

beg me of a message unclear, home sweet home

it’s better than nothing. the woozy way i walk into the ocean with a pocket full of rocks and a mind full of bitter sloshing around, is better than nothing, love

it’s better than everything love

because it’s something i still wish to keep, wish on a nebulae cluster that doesn’t exist the second you force yourself to breathe out, screams

no comforting the choir, i’ll drape mine around your bruised shoulders and shake both of them softly until i’ve killed half the universe with my hubris, until we’ve killed off every erstwhile incandescence just to look a little off-kilter, early morning, i’ve never felt better despite never finding out what repose meant

the sky is red at sunrise and then what

and then we, and then we

feel fine

you are love at the end of the world, and i am ready to struggle for survival. invite me into your rose-tinted apocalypse and allow me to decide a fate which was never mine to rewrite

it’s nothing

it’s better than nothing love

leaving grief. and i—i now remember why
i should never have allowed anyone
to get under my buckling skin
for fine friends are only fine, friends until
they know the perfect way to damage
the stillborn remnants of what you hold on to
them, without patience, distraught,
you; promises of finding someone better
overhearing a devotion that cannot possibly be true
only useful in the event of an epiphanic letdown
i love you but why have i loved you
did i love you because you were kind for five seconds
and it was only fair to bleed when it should not be enough
did you not love me because i wasn’t enough
or because you knew i was nothing to be proud of?
from knowing too much, trusting too well
follies and fey melodies for a final disconnect
i loved you never mean what you say
say anything to say anything to say anything to say
sorry. your smug conversation is one i carry still with me
even as the tactile memory of you burns
and my singed skin curls into the shape of an old friend
who never cared. i never remember to forget
they’ll always be there until they aren’t
leaving, grief, and i—i no longer wish for a happier end
i only wish there was a softer way to recover.

twitchy sniffly noses
silky bracelets woven
a sennight of whispers
and soft rains fallen
bones strident ringing
skins slow submerging
bloodshot eyes and
star-shot skies and
cheekbones shrouded
in staling chlorine

sneaking syrup smiles
under honey gold
four tonics drowned
to fight off the cold
and fast fortune-telling
for finites foretold
trace the lines and
face the folds, please
hold both palms closer
but leave them closed

twitchy ditzy fingers
***** rings unspooled
a sennight of stories
and sinking in pools
bones washed in phenol
skins slick like ferrule
bloodshot minds and
star-shot why’s and
wisteria lips speckled in
the warmest shade of cool.

come wash your sin with me,
i am a flightless soul covered in gossamer
i am love in the form of locks
you cannot unchain with bared teeth
and bare skin and the blade
of the twisted dagger strapped against your thigh
i adore your spirit but i do not
adore you. i am a capricious madness
drink me to excess if you so wish
me to be—a cold chestful of chemical smoke
a sink full of the remnants of
an unborn child, eject me
i am unwanted, i am a wanted hallelujah
with a swollen-gum smile in every
lithographed dead or alive poster, please save me
please buy black water lilies
for my funeral the priest won’t attend
please let the worms make homes out of my
gaping throat, and i shall whisper unto
you. one last time. it will be done
unto your will without wisdom
i am corruption in the form of conscience
i am the riptide washing away your firstborn son
with the taste of ****** verona.

I don't want to reopen my old wounds
But it’s just the only thing I have left to do
There's nothing more to be said about me
Except for a condolence or a passing apology

Picking at the ***** scars, hoping for an infection
Hoping the festering bacteria would spread through
Hoping for sensation, or something maybe close
Hoping that these old wounds would feel brand new

I’m already too numb to ask for more medication
Already too debilitated to beg for a final miracle cure
I’m already too sick, far too late to try on and on
Already at the brink of extinction to still feel unsure

I’m opening old wounds, bleeding them out to dry
Doing everything they all told me not to do, only left out to die
There’s nothing more to be done, no band-aid left to rip
These old wounds seem useless when there’s nothing left in me to fix.

ready steady
hit the clutch
i’ve got your greed
you’ve got my guts

ready steady
please me dim
please you sober
displeased again

ready steady
back and forth
know thyself
more than thy worth

ready steady
hit and touch
bruised and blue-lipped
unlove too much.

Silly love, nuanced as you please
There ain’t nothing I could ever do
I may look like I swallowed the ring of keys
But flying our stolen starship is all up to you

Drive my confused brain cells into extinction
Set the blush on my cheeks straight to full ignition
Don’t let the curious violets catch you softly shrinking
Nevermind my lopsided grin, love, tell me what you’re thinking

Silly love, ornate as you can be
There ain’t nothing I wouldn’t ever do
I may read like flimsy paper-thin allegories
But finding me out is far from something new

Twist up my elastic veins to cat’s cradle elation
I know I’m not rare, but I’d still be your florid fiction
And when the shy mimosas catch us slowly unfolding
We’ll shake ourselves silly as we flee, love, tell me if you’re falling.

unbound cliffs
resurgence
i see spindles
of thunder float
behind studded
eyelids

the day is only
young if i
ask it to; my spine is
cracked like an
unloved book, but
the writing has faded

into bloated gums
swelling with
indignation
swear on your god
knife to paper
ink to straw

touch the edge
of the cloud for another
story—lightning
strikes twelve
under turbid gazes,
placid

chew the shards of glass
between your overcast teeth
and promise me this time—

promise me you wouldn’t lie.

doesn’t feel too good with
blood overflowing in your
mouth, does it? did it turn
the ashes into putrid mud,
as well, and pour out from
every orifice in a thick, dull
sludge, confessing the crimes

tucked quietly behind those
calculating, glimmerless eyes…

does the crunching of glass
sound like the bones i broke
trying to convince myself that
your gaping lips are meant for
more than blatant fabrications—

does the crunching of glass
sound like sweet music to you,

the way it does to me right now?

my dear pretty starling
you'll hold my fragile attention
for no more than perhaps a season

but i'll still sit under your acacia branch
collecting iridescent feathers
as i listen to you beckon away the sun

and my dear pretty starling
soon you'll migrate to warmer evergreen
so i wish your wispy heart farewell

for mine has rotted off like bad fruit
but i'll still tuck away the seeds
for your curious beak to plant elsewhere.

A renegade dream
All burned up in sins
Fall against reason
Fight against rhyme

I could stay and wait
A little while longer
But it seems that I’m
Running out of time

Yet to spill apart this
Chest, and carve my
Second thoughts onto
Your creased brows

I’d gladly let you do
The same—if only our
Fatal circumstance
Shall ever mildly allow.

clumsy
i’m so clumsy
i’m so full of
gasoline, and
stupider still as
i let you in
i let you win
and i let the
phosphate feel
like loving
when you sing
when you sting
i found it too
fascinating
one more strike
before you begin
and you’re clumsy
oh, so clumsy
you’re so full of
broken things
and when i burned
i never knew
that i’d also become
a part of them.

i am tethered to my sickness—
brain worms and implacable affinity
soil and blood like strings on
careful fingers, knitting precariously
the loose ends, every alteration
another implication, pull hard enough
and i am tightly bound to peril
deeply fused into your liquid mercury
insensate though that may be
unliberated; as my mind is a metal can
rust and decay so effervescent
an empty clanking of unlinked adages
circulating alluvial expectations
throughout all of my weeping nerves
and stillness, if i were still able
pain could only wake me for so long
before attachment becomes a
blunted weapon, and your infection, my
bereaved maladaptive paradise.

autumn leaves
and nothingness
seasonal escapade
ache more for less

hills that whisper
junipers without whim
love without living
wounds without skin

mental imposter
corrupted serenity
flimsy enclosures
where art humanity

mountains that shake
hellebores without bloom
live without loving
oxygen unconsumed.

have you found your next darling spithole yet?
not meaning to come off rude but
i just don't have photo albums in my home anymore
of all those weathered stacks
of glossy tourist postcards and airbrushed polaroids and half-arsed private promises that led to
quick pity ***** and more simpleminded conversations (weather? news? one plus one?)
when you ran out of coffee grounds
and breakfast was cold
and the fingernail scars being shamefully picked on were still quite scarlet
like vampire tongues
fresh off a feast, a binge, a hellfest
of a hot-lipped hunger pang
how many towns did you ravage and terrorise and theatrically swoop over with your velvet raiments
how many people fainted
at the mere sight of your anaemic cadaver-sheet skin and anabolic empty marble glare
how many ****** pitchforks punctured your abdomen and how many furious torches
burned the inside of your pelvis and how many corroded teeth did you lose chewing on
leftover bones the next night
sitting all alone in your grandiose dining hall that smells of decaying rats and halitosis
spitting out the occasional tough marrow or stray spider leg (you never really got used to that odd brackish flavour),
how much of it was
worth it to you?
you were acting on impulse
instinct
some other impressive, egregious “i” word you have yet to figure out;
i can't blame you.
blame is too weak a word for anyone with half your brain to ever understand
i can't blame myself
except sometimes in the middle of the night when my teeth refuse to unclench (pissoffpissoffpissOFF)
i understand
you're the same as everyone else (nothing wrong with that i'm wrong i'm wrong so wRoNg) but
sometimes understanding doesn't mean forgiving
[just nod] yes i understand
okay fine, you crave makeup kisses
caked-up made-up fake love fake blood
painting broken boundaries all over brocade bedsheets screaming
slipping almost begging
WARNING don't cross this line and carefully step over the crude chalk drawings
where many unfortunate deaths have occured
splintered spines and shredded vascular systems and cannibal sick sighs
you barely even toed it and you lost an entire ******* arm
past that finish line
where they unhinged their jaws like singing serpents and gorged mercilessly
until their overbloated stomachs
ballooned up and burst into confetti just in time
for the next baby shower birthday party funeral eulogy
and you might be the next
victim
will you fall for that
a g a i n ?
never ****** mind that—
because we're all about acceptance here.
we're all about holy terrors cavorting with holey beggars
we're all about your tremulous callused hands on the inside of someone's delicate insides
coil up their wrenched guts again musicman
spill your unraveling lullaby all the softly shrieking butterflies have desperately searched for a way out
and you crushed them all
just to feel iridescent powder sparkling in your stained palms at 3 a.m.
reflecting the gentle throb of the glow-in-the-dark stars and the grating television static and the godless blue in your undilated pupils
when she's lying next to you fitfully asleep
dreaming of an infinite field where the weeping azaleas never bloom (she still wonders what it meant)
ribcage left ajar just a peep
cascading umber hair and stick-insect limbs splayed all over your worn pillows
sometimes unconsciously feeling your freezing nape
and you feel nothing
at all
i hope you're happy (satisfied?)
or i hope at least, that she rinses off your fraying toothbrush after she uses it to secretly purge in your newly-cleaned toilet
if that's not too much to ask for
and you also left some day-old lemonade and reheated battery acid by the fridge door
just in case
but you missed out on buying coffee grounds again
even though there's an unhealthy smattering of pinned yellow-note reminders
right next to her faded number
and you'll be moving out next week
oh well. oh well. unwell.
my obscene picture collection is still incomplete even though it's set to display on a national gallery next week [this is your cue to clap]
but you never called back so
i hope you're happy (****—sorry—satisfied)
she's not
and please, don't forget to gargle.

you make my heart leap in fathoms;
dazed with love and imperfections, i’m
utterly smitten by you

you’re my slip of the tongue,
my careless laugh out of nowhere,
the pursuit of scarlet lipstick and radical change;
you make me hope for impossibilities and singularity

wishing there’s a dream where i appear—do i
wake you up in butterfly palpitations
the same way you leave me unready, completely
unsteady in the dead of the
wandering night?

(it’s a fickle thought that keeps me going
despite all my misfortunes and the
arrogant reality of our transatlantic million miles away)

i’ve found another “one”
but i don’t want to count higher, this time.

my ribs ache for your missing
puzzle piece, the final fractal of fire that
will keep me warm against apophenic shadows and
keeps me breathing on for infinities…

you make my heart leap in fathoms;
dazed with love and reckless notions, i’m
utterly smitten by you.

One too many opened blister packets.

Chalky blue tablets swallowed down; bitter, choking, dry,

Words bleed out of my brain and morph into seven-headed visions, and

My heavy tongue feels like grating metal and frigid sandpaper as

I carefully utter the slurred words that would reach no one—

"I hope you’re ******* better now."

dear love, i'm quite distracted
by that stray curl of russet hair
and those hazy atmospheric eyes
softly peeking out from beneath

dear love, i'm quite distracted
by those sweetly-serenading lips
i reckon your voice needs a rest
dare i move in now for a kiss?

i just want
to put the
whole world
on pause
and play
you on
r e p e a t.

i’ll never get
tired of the way
the strings
around my neck
tighten as you play
them and sing;
though i’m unable
to sing along
for your spell is
choking my windpipe
and binding tight
my tongue

and yet i could
never ask you to
remove your hands
and the strings
all wrapped around
my bruised neck,
shut up, and just call it
quits, despite the
unfortunate fact
that the copper and
metal wires are lacerating
my bleeding throat.

i have not dwelt
simply to haunt the stubborn
nor to be wasted away
by tides of hubris.
i may be a mere spectre
but i am nary a ghost
nor another figment of your
mischievous imagination.
you may think me but
another flickering shadow
lingering past peripheral visions,
in the darker corners of your
tired, bleary, hallucinating eyes,
but i am not transient
and quiet mantras and disheartened
prayers will not be enough to
make me go away, vanish.
and my silhouette shall eclipse
your sunrise mind, until
persistence turns to paranoia
and mysticism turns to madness,
morphing your shallow dreams
into abyssmal nightmares...
you deserve it,
for you are a murderer—
you have not killed my body,
but you have mercilessly mutilated
my spirit, leaving my heart
beating steady yet badly hollow,
making me vainly ache
for the former tragedy instead.
with what you have done,
it is only fair and just for me
to be the deathless past
billowing rather furiously
behind your closed curtains,
trapping you in my perpetual gale
as you have done to me.
for i have not dwelt simply
to be another superstitious legend
passed around in whispers,
nor will i stay in insignificant limbo
just to be entirely washed away
by the arrogant tides of
the fear you once called love.

but darling, just
what is love
but another word
for the feeling
i could never have?

mind your head
can’t concentrate
i want you to go
don’t stay away
i’m being feisty
my smile is numb
you got me walking
saying “*******”
you’re in my line
of sight and range
but duck your head
before it’s too late
my voices are all out
i won’t say a thing
but i’ll hang around
till i get what you mean
pardon, i lost my mind
when you came around
you’re far too high for me
so let me go, let me go down.

i counted seventeen vultures
circling above to rend my spoiled flesh apart
and feed me to their starving children

i thought i saw a raven
mocking my unfortunate fate
perched solemnly on a chiseled granite bust
weeping with plutonian ponderings

as the foolish crows
sang me a heartless elegy
the epistles crumbled to ashes in my palms
and my fountain pen dried out
into blotted shadows

if only heaven were to open up
and save me from the ominous darkness
but there's no room for another soul
to save; no vacancy to give

so i huddle beneath the branches
of the dying willow tree
and waited for them to take me alive.

i am you
i’ll play a tune
to sing of sunny haze
and cloudy gloom

you are me
you’ll write a sonnet
to speak of fireflies
and underground moments

i am me
i’ll paint a picasso
depicting stained hearts
and abstracted souls

you are you
you’ll orate a speech
declaiming of eloquence
and casual vernacular street

we are we
and we will forever be
immoralised from art to poetry
faded all the way to infinity.

curled up compact
as shockwaves of pain
twist daggers up my sides
doubling over metallic tang
as i coughed up rust
breaking, breaking

coiled within and writhing
as the shock slithers into aches
breaking apart in sulphurous acid
tearing holes in my viscera
as i'm blistered and vitriolic
hurting, hurting

contorted inhumanely
as the irascible aftershocks
flowed magma on my insides
burning me internally
as i waited for it to be over
dying, dying.

i’m aware
my hands
are tainted
with blood,
but i’m afraid
that yours is
not on mine.

lipstick stains
and beyond
at the backseat
and all over my brain
i missed the tears
under the covers
disappearing
like little favours
leave me alone
i will close that track
cross the threshold
and mind the gap
i vied for this
this vile acridity
this insane stupidity
and i believe in
the reverse of sense
hoping tragedies
like a sceptical god
a symphony like
sweet medicines to
kick in when the
lights rage in blood
forget about me now
my floral imprints
blossoming on skin
pretty in red and pink
are nothing but
butterfly memories
fleeting and fugacious
as cold as your kiss
hug that jacket tighter
and close both eyes
the walk is shorter
than this long drive
but if your lips bruise
or your fingers tire
from singing back
dear, i’ll douse the fire
my gasoline’s empty
and i’m almost out
this is all falling apart
so hold your mouth
and when everything
fades out slowly to
music and black
as you forget to listen
you will find that i
wiped away all of the
evidence, and the
lipstick stains are missing.

your brown sugar eyes
and glances that tasted
of soft candy and vanilla
lifted away the gravity
and it spun candy floss
in shades of pastel clouds
within a heart that was
as bitterly grey as can be.

a yesterday
or two ago
i watched
my child
grow up and
get married

but today
and in the now
i watched
my child
fall down and
get buried.

silence is a
distant bird
at the back
of my throat
daring to fly away

conversation
is a broken
winged dove
wishing to soar
yet never getting away.

i quietly wonder
if i had done anything
wrong to reclaim
another faultful star

as i stare outside the window
cascading past endless stretches
of worn paved-roads
and vast fertile landscapes

and everything looks transiently gargantuan

but i momentarily glance
at the empty bus seat next to me
and i feel rather small again

flimsy music in my ears
speaking of infinite sentiments
and i’m disenchanted again
these mellisonant voices are enough
they have to be enough

to keep my wandering mind
company against the ephemeral madness

i flick my red lighter open
and hold it close—but not too close
to my dying pen; wondering, for
a moment, if the same trick could revive
my spirits like the stuttering ink,
tempted to burn my flesh back to life

but i merely stare into the flame—
flickering unsteady still—and blow it out
so it doesn’t have to be lonely
as my heart is right now

as i travel from small city
to smaller town, i wonder where
all my friends are right now
how they are all doing
what they are doing

and if they’re all having fun
without me.

how can i say
that i envy the chase
from the tip of my pencil
to your graphite gaze?
spitting my heart
onto an endless canvas
of greys and blacks,
hoping the red would stain…
but it never does.
only your floral words are
indelible on my skin
and the reverse
is just a lie i tell myself
so i could sleep a little better
every forsaken night.
the truth is far from your moon;
beyond all your pretty stars
and iridescent eternities,
it is despairingly beyond my fathoms.
but i hope, and again i hurt
for butterfly smiles
and deluding taciturn undertows
and nightmarish illusions
leaving bruises of you
on the very tip of my lost tongue
and all over my wept eyes;
a lifeless empty void
against the autumn shower
of your warm hermetic glances.
and there is no one else
to keep this rusted clockwork
ticking rhythmically to the beats
of your mindless cradle…
and that is the ultimate folly
of this ascetic destructive shale
that i tactlessly call my soul.
for a fool’s machinery,
this chemical heart is.
So indiscernible to lose itself in
such vitreous self-infliction,
and sabotaging the very blood
that my tiring arteries
now regain, thus to sustain
the very memory of your breath
in tranquil consonance…
foolish—and yet; a fool, i am.
a fool for believing that this
lie was past the dark side of the moon
and beyond my wounded stars
and lacklustre infinities…
you are despondently beyond my fathoms.
but i hope, and again, i hurt.
darling, just how can i ever say
that i envy the calm reflection
from the incipience of your melody
to your coda’s revelations?

hurtful twinges
filling up every
corner of my
expanding coroner’s
disease; debilitating,
destroying, until
what’s left of me
is nothing

hurtful twinges
crashing down every
space of my
suffocating mental
affliction; desperate,
decaying, until
what’s left of you
is nothing.

a severed midnight
taking the calls of a thousand
dreaming souls, fading

i wonder if the rain will wash us away

drifting into a somnolent embrace
against clashing tides of aegan
until i have sand between my fingers
breathing in the hawthorn blossoms

reaching again until it falls
and stops crying beneath my feet

just close your eyes and softly
rest amid sounds of synaptic crickets and
faint traces of chanterelle
between your slightly-open mouth

waiting to hold onto forbidden auguries
coalitions of sweeter reveries
i couldn't find behind your eyelids

and then, perhaps, after a million years under
the stars, i'll open my eyes to revelations

the light sleeps on. where can we be alone to watch them?

pastel laughter, petals of umber
lip-gloss stains and sweet december

brick wall steps, stepping stones
withering glares, i contemplate alone

seven mysteries i don't dare speak
magicians fleet in magic tricks

intervals lead to cyanide infinity
trapped in a loop of tangible vanity

tasting alcohol and numbing smiles
maybe i'll stay here for a while

midnight calm and oceans deep
i'll keep my thoughts in the morning
and talk in my sleep.

an undulating reverie
hangs heavy in the silence
past canyons abundant with sunlight
and dreams made out of cotton

there, beyond the intoxicating haze,
you stood.

my lips uttered no words
that the universe could decipher
but the midnight tide understood
what i truly meant

now, if only you could, ma chérie

but the scrupulous colloquy is bound to break
and the stratosphere rewinds again
past divine oculists and obstinate facsimiles
and beyond the desolate valleys
where no sunshine dares to embark

and what’s left in the end
at the very edge of such a disenchanting,
morose fantasy

is you, and me,
and an undulating reverie.

for there never was
and never will be
a finer vagrant soul
to poetically allude me
than the billows of notes
that fall from your shade
and the stars in your lips
to sing a thousand serenades
dear, if only i could compose
about all my woeful throes
in lights enchanting as yours
no word a wasted recourse
and the aesthete that lies
beneath restless amber eyes
will dream up a promise
for fallen eternity’s premise
where the universe spins
as relentless time should be
and no whispers of parallels
between the lines of you and me
i’m quite dizzy from the sun again
but i’ll close my hands, count to ten
and wait against such fragile hope
that you’re the sunrise to decode
so why do i weep, ever still?
in the midst of my bedroom floor
only bare remnants remain, until
a voice paints a distant nevermore
of faithless keep, an endless rue
tomorrow’s heart, nor i nor you
southern nights, quaint afterglow
the days pass on as we’ll quietly go
i may be weary, yet do not think
i’ll give up when i’m on the brink
let’s chase the wind, and we’ll ascend
to an everlasting paradise we can spend
for there never was and never will be
a finer valiant soul to poetically allure me
than the muse of the moon and billowing notes
that fall from your shade and the stars that you wrote.